Why Have Immigration Agents Detained This American Citizen Three Times?

When immigration agents pulled U.S. citizen Leonardo Garcia Venegas from his car this month and shackled him, he wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t scared. 

As ProPublica detailed last fall, he had already been detained twice before.

A year ago, Garcia Venegas was filming his brother’s arrest during a raid on their coastal Alabama construction site when he was tackled by agents, who ignored his pleas that he was a citizen. A few weeks later, an officer entered the home Garcia Venegas was building and refused to trust the now-26-year-old’s Alabama REAL ID, which only citizens and legal residents can get.

Videos of the incidents went viral. He appeared before Congress. He also has a suit pending against the Trump administration. 

But all the attention hasn’t changed much. On May 2, agents followed him back to his home. They again didn’t believe his claims of citizenship or the REAL ID he once again tried to show them.

“Honestly, it feels terrible,”  Garcia Venegas told ProPublica. The mental burden of wondering when it will happen again weighs on him, bringing stress and depression. “I drive to work every morning and I know, at any moment, they could pull me over again.”

While immigration sweeps have receded from the headlines, Garcia Venegas’ most recent incident highlights how the mistaken detention of Americans has continued despite congressional inquiries and denials by senior immigration officials. 

Days after Garcia Venegas’ latest detention, masked agents tackled an American teen in the Bronx. When they finally realized he was a citizen, they left him in an unfamiliar neighborhood, bloody and bruised.

The same week both citizens were held, administration officials spoke on a panel at a border security conference in Phoenix and downplayed and denied that citizens have been mistakenly detained. Recordings of the conference were shared with ProPublica. 

“Since the start of this administration, we have not had any arrests of U.S. citizens for false identification, where we thought they were an illegal alien but they were actually a U.S. citizen,” said Matthew Elliston, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. “That’s happened zero times.”

In another panel, the outgoing head of ICE, Todd Lyons, acknowledged immigration agents sometimes detained American citizens in cases where those citizens allegedly put “hands on law enforcement.” He also said the arrests operated as “a deterrent.” 

As ProPublica and others have reported, citizens — including Garcia Venegas — accused of assaulting officers have not always been charged with assault. Video footage has often also contradicted Department of Homeland Security claims that its agents were attacked.

In response to questions from ProPublica, a DHS spokesperson said in a statement that despite the shackles, Garcia Venegas was “NOT detained.” The statement continued: “ICE conducted a routine vehicle stop on a car registered to an illegal alien. After Venegas’ identity was established, he was released.” DHS also stated that the teen in the Bronx was “NOT arrested” but rather “temporarily detained.” 

But it’s not clear what, if any, intel agents have used in the repeated detention of Garcia Venegas. 

Garcia Venegas said agents and local law enforcement at the scene blamed him for his most recent arrest because he was driving a car registered to his brother.

“The officers told me that I risk being stopped again until I register the license plates in my own name,” Garcia Venegas said in a recent filing in his lawsuit. “But the officers could have known immediately that I was not my brother just by checking the REAL ID that was in my hand when they pulled me from the truck and tackled me to the ground.”

Garcia Venegas’ incidents bear the hallmarks of what have become known as “Kavanaugh stops.” Those are stops in which, Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh wrote in a case last fall, agents are allowed to stop people based in part on their “apparent ethnicity” (Garcia Venegas is Latino), job (he works in construction) and language (he primarily speaks Spanish).

Americans, Kavanaugh said, have no reason to worry. Agents will establish their citizenship and “promptly let the individual go.” (In a later case on another issue, Kavanaugh included a footnote that “officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity.”)

Even though he was born in Florida and graduated high school in the same county where keeps getting detained, Garcia Venegas sometimes wonders if he should pick up and move to his family’s home in Mexico. 

Last fall, when Garcia Venegas filed his federal lawsuit against the government, he demanded more than compensation. He has insisted agents stop “unconstitutional” raids in his area. The government said in court that the immigration sweeps are “based on reasonable suspicion and probable cause and the Constitution.”

After Garcia Venegas was held for the third time, his lawyers rushed to update his lawsuit with details of his latest detention. But the government’s lawyers have argued that Garcia Venegas’ case still has no merit.

Garcia Venegas also filed a separate claim for damages with the government last fall. He received a denial from ICE in mid-April that contained no explanation. His third detention came roughly two weeks later.  

During the border security conference this month, the head of Customs and Border Protection,   Rodney Scott, was asked about ProPublica’s reporting on citizens’ detentions and how the agency is addressing them.